Spiderbeam Heavy Duty fiberglass poles are perfect for building all kinds of wire antennas. A single person can easily put them up within a few minutes. Especially developed to make our portable equipment even more rugged and durable!

These are extremely strong poles, with a much greater wall thickness (up to 2mm!) than the usual "fishing rod" types. A special reinforcing winding technique - several layers of fiberglass are wound in alternating direction (criss/cross winding) - provides greatly increased lateral and linear strength. Stronger joints are achieved by a much larger overlap between the individual tube segments than usual.

Spiderbeam 12m Heavy Duty poles are very well suited for building 40/80/160m wire GP or inverted L antennas. (Lee W9OY has built a beautiful 80/40m vertical using our poles: http://w9oy.painloss.com/SSvert/SSvert.htm). They can also easily support temporary lightweight 1 Element Quad or Delta loops for 20-10m, and dipoles for all bands, especially when used with open wire feedline. (Most baluns would be somewhat heavy). 4-6 poles could be used to build lightweight beams for 40 or 80m.

Even the top segment is 8mm in diameter (and 1.4mm wall thickness), so the poles can be used to their full 12m length - unlike other poles where the top segment is very thin as a whip. During our tests we were able to put 80m inv vee dipoles (made from 1mm diameter enameled copper wire (AWG 18) and open wire feedline) right at the top of the 12m pole.. No way you can do this with a regular "fishing rod"! At 9-10m height, the poles can easily support small VHF / UHF yagis.

The best (and cheapest) wire to use for building such wire antennas (verticals, loops, dipoles etc.) is AWG 18 (= 1mm diameter) enameled copper wire or similar. Thin fishing monofilament (1mm diameter) or similar rope is very suitable for guy lines.

The first prototypes were tested Nov/Dec 2004 during 120km/h winds at the North Sea coast and performed just great! Since then, well over 1000 poles have been installed worldwide. Get yours today and enjoy outdoor radio with a professional heavy duty pole..